Jeff Veen’s Start Conference
After leaving Google last month, Jeff Veen’s first new venture out of the gate is “Start,” a one-day conference targeting Web folks who are looking to start their own company. Registration is just $200 for the event, which will feature speeches from Evan Williams, Merlin Mann, WordPress-founder Matt Mullenwag, Om Malik and others.
Highly Suspicious
Pitchfork’s 4.7 review of My Morning Jacket’s Evil Urges does a much better job summing up this particularly frustrating album than my words could do. Oddly, my feeling is that this is a good record. It’s just not a good My Morning Jacket record. The band’s efforts to continuously evolve their sound, which they effectively did on Z, went off-course somehow and resulted in a weird mess. The cringe-worthy “Highly Suspicious” just about says it all — it’s easily one of the worst songs I’ve heard from any of my favorite bands in the last 5 years.
The Search Begins
I made a pretty big decision last week.
After countless years of wondering who my biological parents are, I finally decided to get serious about my search and hired a private investigation agency that specializes in people searches. The firm guarantees within a year I’ll have the names of my birth mother and father, along with other pertinent information such as marital status, financial standing and current residence.
Or so I’m told.
When you’ve had a question like this go unanswered for almost 30 years, it’s easy to be a little skeptical of firms that make these big claims and promises. But what’s the alternative? On my own, my feeble search efforts were always tiring, demoralizing and frustrating even before they ever really started.
Having never gone through this process before, most people are unaware and frankly surprised to hear the few birthrights an adoptee has. At birth, you are completely stripped of your right to know who gave birth to you and are legally barred from knowing this precious information. And this isn’t just a Pennsylvania thing. There are only six states in the U.S. where adult adoptees have unrestricted access to their own original birth records.
I don’t have the time or energy to deal with hiring a lawyer and going to a court that will decide whether I find out who my birth parents are. Can you imagine standing before a judge who has the power in his hands to grant or deny access to this information? No thanks.
Instead, I’ve turned to what I’m envisioning are a team of moustached-men who will be digging through microfilm and maybe following someone’s tail. I will even be getting email updates from the investigators who are handling my case.
I have no idea how any of this will turn out. I could be sitting here a year from now with the same information I have today. But I hope not. All I really want to uncover is the answer to the long-standing question of where I really came from.
(P.S. I would be remiss if I didn’t give props to the very helpful and very nice people at Catholic Social Services in Scranton, PA. Your refusal to return my calls or respond to letters of simple inquiry showed the class and sophistication your organization possesses.)
My Sunday Afternoon: Chicken Wings
Casting aside exercise and healthy eating for a day.
No, I didn’t eat them all.
U.S. Ad Agencies Ranked by Revenue
According to Ad Age’s latest compilation of agency revenue rankings, there are 537 agencies generating more than $1 million a year. Of course, this is all based on questionnaires, public documents or estimations, which means the list isn’t 100 percent accurate by any means. For instance, Philadelphia’s Red Tettemer is nowhere in sight, despite obviously being big enough to have a position.
Personally for me, it’s interesting to see where Neiman Group falls in the mix. Despite a slight drop in revenues, we still are in the middle of the pack, coming in at number 257 in 2007.
Veen Leaving Google
Jeffrey Veen, the man largely responsible for turning Google Analytics into what it is today, announced his resignation from Google. As one of the thousands who benefits from his work on a daily basis, much appreciation goes to Veen and his team.
What’s next for the former Adaptive Path co-founder? He’s not specific, other than saying he’s got a couple of small projects in the works.
Growing Department
As I alluded to in a recent Tweet, our Philadelphia team at Neiman Group landed one of the most talented designers in the city a few weeks back. Ryan Katrina, of Neuarmy fame, starts tomorrow, and we’re psyched to have him and his talents on board. The addition helps round out our growing team nicely.
While on the topic of hiring, if you’re a back-end developer interested in a new gig, let’s talk. We have an immediate opening and are looking to fill it with someone who’s smart, hungry and desirous of a unique opportunity.
Grand Theft Auto IV Reviews
Rockstar’s latest, available on Tuesday, is sure getting good reviews. It’s the highest rated game ever on Metacritic.
Missing the Details #1
I received the following confirmation email on an Urban Outfitters order I placed earlier in the week. While it looks harmless enough, take a look at the annoying user experience you have to deal with to determine the proper tracking link to click on.
This is precisely what happens when the creative and technical folks fail to sweat the details. It would require a bit more work on the back-end to parse out the order number and present only the appropriate tracking link, but it would be worth it.
Take away: don’t make your customers work.
10 Million iPhones Not Happening
Unless there is a dramatic jump in sales over the next 60 days, it’s clear at this point that Apple is not going to hit the 10 million iPhone sales mark it had hoped for in its first year. Since last June, they’ve sold 5.4 million phones, which would mean they’d have to almost double sales in the next two months.
This is why you don’t see Apple routinely making product sales predictions.
(Update: I was mistaken in what Apple’s publicly stated sales goal was. It’s not 10 million during the June - June timeframe. It’s 10 million for 2008.)
Mac Sales Continue to Outpace Industry Growth
Latest quarterly results from Apple are in. The highlights: $7.51 billion in sales and net profit of $1.05 billion. 2.2 million Macs, 10.6 million iPods and 1.7 million iPhones sold.
Mac sales continue to be the big story here, as unit sales were up 51 percent from the year-ago quarter. How does this compare to the overall PC industry? Gartner forecasted last month that the industry would see 10.9 precent growth this year, which means Apple is currently out-performing the competition by a factor of five.
Microsoft Live Mesh
Typical Microsoft speak on their new Live Mesh technology that aims to sync data across computers and mobile devices.
Imagine all your devices—PCs, and soon Macs and mobile phones—working together to give you anywhere access to the information you care about.
With Live Mesh, you can spend less time managing devices and data and more time connecting with family and friends or collaborating with colleagues.
Good luck in getting this to work well. Apple has been trying to do this with .Mac for years, and even though Microsoft’s dev team likely dwarfs the resources Apple is throwing at .Mac, it’s an incredibly difficult thing to pull off.
And frankly, nothing Microsoft has done software-wise in recent years makes me believe they’ll be able to make this a compelling or functioning solution.
Ricky Gervais Featured in GTA IV
First it was movie tie-ins, then it was actual actors doing in-game voice overs. Now Rockstar is setting a new precedent by having an actor perform brand new material within Grand Theft Auto IV. Ricky Gervais, the genius behind the UK version of The Office and HBO’s Extras, will be featured somewhere in the game, due out next week.
Headline Tees
The Barbarian Group, the Boston-based creative shop best known for its work with Crispin Porter on Subservient Chicken, is helping CNN monetize their headlines by offering t-shirts with select front page headlines. From Barbarian:
As of this writing, CNN has three homepage stories that can be made into shirts, including “Dad mistakes young son for prey, shoots.” Can’t wait to be wearing that one out and about.
DirecTV: Blog it Out
By far, my favorite spot in the new Christopher Guest-directed series of DirecTV commercials is “Blog it Out.” Jonathan Michael Higgins, playing the role of a cable company marketing VP, delivers a hilarious strategy for combating the satellite experience.
The piano playing-esque typing gesture is priceless. The other spots can be seen here.